Show HN: Live Bitcoin Transactions from around the globe in WebGL

http://www.earthbit.net

by ionwake • 13 years ago

34 35 13 years ago

I built this over the weekend. Any feedback is appreciated. Please note you will need a WebGL enabled browser. Thank you for checking it out.

--UPDATE-- HN Traffic is strangling earthbit. There is sporadic downtime due to the web services I am using, if no transactions appear after a few seconds, then please try again in an hour.

ionwake11• 13 years ago

I just finished building this "weekend project" yesterday. Please let me know what you think.

Thank you

fuj• 13 years ago

There is a problem with the Access-Control-Allow-Origin

ionwake11• 13 years ago

Yep - my CORS proxy went down - I need another! :(

wereHamster• 13 years ago

Textures don't show up on the globe, warnings in the developer console: https://gist.github.com/wereHamster/58eb96d184dffd096e3f.

karanbhangui• 13 years ago

seems to be broken in chrome on osx, works in safari 7 with webgl enabled.

ionwake11• 13 years ago

Problems in Firefox? Try:

URL > about:config , search for WebGL, make sure webgl_enabled parameter is set to "True".

Still now working? Try this link: http://www.craftfortress.com/earthbit/index2.html

kristaps• 13 years ago

At least the autoplay background music works.

simondlr2• 13 years ago

This is beautiful. Earth is just black though. Not seeing any countries. Is this intentional?

ionwake11• 13 years ago

Please try the fix I just posted above - thank you.

simondlr2• 13 years ago

Thanks. Link 2 works. What's the legend? What's the difference between green, black and blue stripes?

spenvo2• 13 years ago

A curious thing just happened. I enabled WebGL in Safari and visited the site, after which I saw this -> (screenshot): http://imgur.com/yY1vEC8

What you're seeing there (behind the globe) is pieces of my desktop, code in a text editor, even snippets of another tab open in safari! How is this even remotely secure? Would this be possible in other implementations of WebGL or just Safari's implementation? I understand that it allows for greater access to your computer's resources, but either way, after this user-experience I'm far less inclined to include it in future projects.

Original comment: Cool idea, although I kept waiting for additional/contextual info to load on the globe [a geographic or node-based map; weighted lines between points (or, wait, that doesn't make sense); a click-to-learn-more on the transactions themselves, etc.], just something to delve-into that would make it one-iota more interesting. Either way it's a soothing visualization.

Are the sounds' frequencies tied to the size of the transactions? If so, that's a great idea -- random-but-informative background noise! Kudos - keep refining it! (A bunch of 'texture unit not renderable' messages in console. Tried in Chrome Canary 33.0.1720.0 for Mac version 10.9.)

Tried your other link http://www.craftfortress.com/earthbit/index2.html and the textures loaded no problem (I see the map of countries projected on the globe) -- but transactions aren't loading in now.

ionwake11• 13 years ago

I have never had someone be able to load textures but not get transactions .... perhaps if you had lots of windows open - your IP got temporarily banned from the geolocation web service? If this is the case it should start working after an hour timeout.

Sound, Color and Size of the column depend on the transaction size.

I will be adding further information such as wallet address and other variables in the future. Thanks for your feedback = )

ionwake11• 13 years ago

--Regarding your screenshot--

That is awesome! I do believe that is a video driver malfunction and it doesn't pose a security risk

modeless• 13 years ago

That is a Safari bug, not a feature of WebGL. Apple has lagged in implementing WebGL (which is sad, they invented the canvas tag after all). Their implementation is disabled by default due to bugs like this.

mrspeaker• 13 years ago

I was seeing this a lot in Chrome Canary on mac when doing a bunch of Canvas and WebGL games. The scary thing is you can see your emails and other sensitive information in some of the glitches - damn memory, always memorising stuff!

eterm• 13 years ago

In firefox I'm getting a globe with the map showing but no transactions displayed.

ionwake11• 13 years ago

The transactions should kick in after about 10 seconds

m12k• 13 years ago

There's a surprisingly large number of bitcoin transactions coming from the Australian outback, around the area of the Gibbon Desert and Great Sandy Desert. I'm pretty sure that's a very, very sparsely populated area, so either there's something wrong with the data, or there's some equipment out there which is somehow getting geolocated. A secret bitcoin mining operation in the desert?

Terk3• 13 years ago

There's no way to geolocate bitcoin transactions. Blockchain itself doesn't store IP addressees. Well-connected nodes like blockchain.info can only detect the IP address of a node that was first to relay a transaction to their (blockchain.info's) node. That might be IP of the original sender, but most likely it's not. Most of the time it's either another well-connected node or some online wallet.

Explaination: http://millybitcoin.com/is-ip-address-associated-with-transa...

ionwake11• 13 years ago

It is an approximation. The IP addresses are taken from the nearest relays of each of the transactions. See : https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions.

Terk3• 13 years ago

This is a P2P network. “Nearest” relay has nothing to do with geographic neighborhood.

I made IP whois stats of nodes I am currently connected to and they are: 8x USA (3x NY, 2x Texas, 1x California, 1x Virginia, 1x Georgia), 2x France, 2x China, 2x Russia, 2x Poland, 2x Switzerland, 1x Czech Republic, 1x Germany, 1x Portugal, 1x Sweden, 1x New Zealand, 1x Netherlands.

My transaction will be relayed to these nodes and then one of them will be first to relay it further to blockchain.info - and it's the IP of this lucky relay node what you'll show. Which one will be the first depends most likely on [temporary speed of connection between me and relay nodes + processing speed of relay nodes + temporary speed of connection between relay nodes and blockchain.info nodes] and such combination will make it semi-random. You will detect my transaction as being located in NYC or in Beijing or in Paris or wherever, but it has totally nothing to do with my actual location and calling it approximation is a misunderstanding.

Or I'll use online wallet in which case it will be even less related to my geographic location (it will be semi-random based of nodes connected to my online wallet's server).

What you show is a nice visualization, but it's rather a map of the best-connected nodes and it has nothing to do with geographic location of senders of bitcoin transactions.

lectrick• 13 years ago

Latest Chrome on Windows here.

I see the globe and hear the music but I don't see transactions.

I'd recommend disabling the music load for now while HN hits it. It will save on some unnecessary traffic. You can always re-enable it again in a few days.

ionwake11• 13 years ago

Ok the server got flooded with requests and came down - I am just reuploading a version which uses a different web service.

The PROXY I use for the JSONP request got taken down by the traffic - can anyone offer a suitable replacement JSONP proxy URL for me ot use? Help would be greatly appreciated!

qt_scientist• 13 years ago

Default url doesn't function properly here as well, but I did find a cat. Can you find it too?

craftfortress link works fine

knowaveragejoe2• 13 years ago

Is there any definitive way to tell if a transaction is someone exchanging USD <-> bitcoin on an exchange versus actual trade? I remain unconvinced that actual trade with bitcoin is growing at an appreciable rate with the current volatility and deflation.

ionwake11• 13 years ago

You want to know which transactions occur that involve merchants? (leaving out exchanges?)

knowaveragejoe2• 13 years ago

Late, but yes. AFAIK there's no way to distinguish such a thing unless the exchanges use the same wallets for escrow.

impostervt• 13 years ago

Any chance of sharing the source code?

Show HN: Live Bitcoin Transactions from around the globe in WebGL

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